April Newsletter

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May Meeting: Officers of the Soiciety will be getting together at 9:00 am, Saturday, April 1st at the Bob Evans Resturant at Graceland Shopping Center to review last minute details of our plans for our plant sale on April 15th. We invite all members to feel free to join us for this informal meeting, particularly if you have plants to sell. This year we will be trying a new idea to assist in our sale checkout: each plant being sold will bear 2 tags, one tag (which bears our website address and information on meeting times) should be marked with plant identification (to the best of your ability - common names are perfectly fine), and the other tag, a colored but otherwise blank label should be marked by the seller with the price of the plant, and the seller's initials. At checkout, the colored labels will be removed, and the prices of each label will be added for every sale. Following the sale, the tags will be sorted by the initials on them and the totals added to determine disbursements. It is our belief that this will simplify and speed up the checkout process. Doug Sweet will hand out labels at the Saturday Pre Meeting, so that any of our officers can pass these on to others as needed, and of course, these labels will be available at the Friday, April 14th setup.

Friday April 14th: Cactus and Succulent Society plant sale setup. Setup time for our sale will begin at 3pm on Friday. Security will be on hand to let members inside for setup after closing at 5pm. Please re-visit this site for more information on which entrance to use to bring your plants inside (please do not use the main entrance (ticketing) to bring in plants.

April Cactus and Succulent Sale: The Central Ohio Cactus and Succulent Society will be hosting its 2017 spring Cactus and Succulent Sale on Saturday April 15th at the Franklin Park Conservatory in classroom C/D on the lower level. Sales will begin at 10:00 am and will continue until 5 pm.

We offer plants of many sizes, from nice miniatures, suitable for creating your own dish gardens, terrariums, succulent wreaths, and vertical gardens, to larger plants, more suitable for larger pots and planters. Other items may include cactus soil, pots, books, and decorative rocks. Members of the Society will be available to assist with sales, and to provide tips on how to grow these plants. All plants are in limited supply, so plan to come early for the best selection.

Cash and checks only - we cannot process payment by credit card.

Wednesday, April 19thWe will be meeting 7:30 pm at the Franklin Park Conservatory. Officers and members will be leading a program on the basic care of cactus and other succulents, and will lead demonstrations (or perhaps workshops) on techniques for potting and repotting plants. Time permitting, we may also present basic information on propagation techniques of cactus and other succulents. This program will be for the benefit of those who are new to the hobby, and who are looking for some introductory guidelines on the "Care and Feeding" of cacti and other succulents. It will be a great opportunity for members to meet and greet those who may be joining us following our April 15th sale.

1315 Kinnear RdColumbus, OH 43212An exploration of how all living-beings are connected.The event will be held on Earth Day. Like last year we will have outdoors activities (weather-permitting). Admission and parking will be free. Doors will be open between 10 am - 4 pm.

March minutes: We met Wednesday, March 15th at 7:30pm at the Franklin Park Conservatory. While we had a meeting scheduled for basic cactus care, we decided to reschedule this for our April meeting. Instead, we concentrated on other pressing issues, including details of our upcomming sale. This included discussion on picking up plants from Bill Hendricks, and Ken Freling, confirming Friday setup times prior to the sale, and discussion on our 2 label pricing system for sale plants (see the April Pre-Sale section at the top of this page). At the time of the March meeting, these labels had not been shipped yet - but they are available now.

The other issue had to do with our old website. Frontpage, the program which I had been using to create and update our website is no longer recognized by most servers, and I was no longer able to update our website using this software. Free websites severely restricted the amount of information which we could present on our website - we would have to sacrifice the majority of the web pages that we already had. Our officers authorized an expenditure of $75 to create and prepay our new website. I have reserved a new URL for our society, and prepaid for our first year (at a cost just over $40). I have been busily re-creating, and re-formatting the pages from our original website, and have set the groundwork to add a few additional features. The site remains a work in progress for now: the majority of the text from our original website is in place, and I am working on re-programming the hyperlinks to additional information and photographs - especially on the plant of the month archives. I appreciate your patience as we transition to our new website, and invite everyone to take a tour of it to check it out, and perhaps to make a few suggestions for additional features, and/or to make it easier to navigate.

Dues are Due: It is that time of year to request all of our members to send in their membership dues for 2017. Our dues are necessary to maintain the society's membership in the Cactus and Succulent Society of America, our national organization, which funds research, conservation and education on cactus and other succulents, and to provide classroom space for our meetings, sales, and other special events at the Franklin park Conservatory, and speaker fees and other expenses. Members may participate in our shows and sales, and membership may be required for some of our special events and field trips. Annual membership fees are set at 15$ per household, and may be delivered directly to Harry Gate, or Doug Sweet at our monthly meetings, or you may mail your dues made payable to:

Doug Sweet2470 Roberts Mill RoadLondon, OH 43140

Please indicate that the check is for the Cactus and Succulent Society DuesClub/Conservatory Announcement: I have recently received an E-mail from Karin Noecker at the Franklin Park Conservatory, she attached a handbook which defines our new contract with the Conservatory beginning in 2016. I thought that it would be useful to post the contents of that contract here on our website, just in case anyone would wish to discuss it in more detail at our September meeting.The Plant Society Handbook page includes the new agreement as well as several of the new forms to request classrooms, equipment, and to reserve dates for shows and sales. The Flower Show Rental Contract contains request forms which are specific for shows and sales.